Month: October 2019

I have a tendency to be somewhat impulsive. Not about big things, necessarily – I’m not likely to upend by life on a whim – but if my impulse involves yarn or books and is unlikely to do anyone any real harm, well, let’s just say yarn stores are dangerous for me.

These adorable little balls of yarn are Havirland Pax Sock. They are soft and self striping and though I have many, many other projects on the go they have all fallen by the wayside this week after a trip to my LYS. In lieu of picking only one color, I bought their “Frankensocks Kit” which gave me ten mini-skeins with which to presumably make one pair of socks. However, I decided I would have much more fun using those mini skeins to make…. mini socks.

The are eensy, and they knit up so fast, and I am totally obsessed. It turns out each mini skein has the perfect amount of yarn to make two mini socks, each displaying the full color palette.

When I’ve finished all twenty socks, I’ll string them together to make a garland. I had originally envisioned this as a holiday decoration, but I’m fairly certain I’ll keep this up year round for quite some time. They are mini socks! I can’t get over it.

I’ll also post the pattern I improvised here once the garland is finished. After twenty socks it should be good and thoroughly tested (knocks on wood). In the meantime, I have 11.75 socks to go, and the charm has yet to wear off (knocks on wood again).

I’ve wanted to learn to work with oil paints for a long time. I love the colors, the look of the finished paintings – but I was always intimidated by them. My understanding was they smelled funny and never dried, and would thus get everywhere and ruin all my possessions. Also possibly kill me when the turpentine inevitably caught fire.

To get around this, I learned to work with water-soluble oils a little over a year ago. This felt like a great intermediate step, but I was still intrigued by working with the real thing. So earlier this year, I dove in and took a class with full-on, legit-artist oil paints.

Thankfully, I survived, though I did briefly fear for my life when I shattered a glass jar filled with solvent. And it is true that I got paint everywhere. Mostly on myself. Pro tip: red and blue oil paint that you can’t quite wash off of your arm makes for a very convincing fake bruise.

I present to you my early efforts, in rough order of completion. And I would strongly urge anyone who has also wanted to learn to paint to go forth and embrace the mess. It’s absolutely worth it.